


many sparrows.

by outpastthemoat



Series: song of songs [7]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Fluff, M/M, Season 9 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-11-07
Packaged: 2018-02-27 23:08:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 15,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2710061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outpastthemoat/pseuds/outpastthemoat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean tells him that all things happen in threes.  Good luck, bad luck, doesn’t matter: Dean says it all balances out in the long run. Once something terrible’s happened, there’s nothing left to do but wait for the fallout, then hope for a run of good luck next time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [【授权翻译】Many Sparrows 许多麻雀](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8339185) by [YTyuzhihan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/YTyuzhihan/pseuds/YTyuzhihan)



Dean tells him that all things happen in threes.  Good luck, bad luck, doesn’t matter: Dean says it all balances out in the long run.  Once something terrible’s happened, there’s nothing left to do but wait for the fallout, then hope for a run of good luck next time.

The way Dean tells it, the bad luck rains down over their heads in spades.  Castiel can hear what Dean isn’t saying, that a sign of good luck coming their way is a rare and elusive thing.

"I had some good luck once," Dean says.  "Dad had to get out of town in a hurry, right? Left me behind to get clear on my own.  Stole a car, found five hundred-dollar bills in the glove box.  And the tank was already filled.  Gas held out for six hundred miles.  Got away clean."  A miracle, Castiel supposes. Dean tells the story the way Castiel has heard humans recount the story of olive oil burning in a menorah for eight nights straight.

When Castiel was an angel, all he’d had to do was look at something, and he’d known it exactly for what it was.  Now he looks at things and nothing comes to mind.  Nothing is familiar.  Nothing makes sense.  He will drive at night through small towns and see great black shadows and small flickering lights on the side of the road and he will not be able to tell what they are, if they are windows in a house or headlights from some distant car or the eyes of a white-tailed deer.  He can stare at a lamppost for minutes trying to understand its meaning, its place in the world.  He will pause in the middle of a sentence describing something to Dean and  _Uhhhh_  will come out of his mouth instead of whatever it is that he really means to say.

When Castiel had looked up and saw the flames on the ceiling of his room, the night he had opened his eyes in the darkness, he had, for one brief, aborted moment, thought they were rays of sun, that morning had come early, and then he had seen the flames and felt the smoke burning through his lungs and thought that this must be hellfire.  Later he had understood that this was the wrath of heaven, delivered to his doorstep by his brothers.  He wonders now if it all amounts to the same thing.

He had seen other things that night. Things he has seen, but had not understood.  He thinks he has seen Dean bow his head and cry quietly into his hands.  

But like many other things, Castiel isn’t sure.  He does remember Dean, grimly surveying the burning ruins of the bunker, watching his home turn to ash before his eyes for the second time in his life.  He does remember Dean opening the door of the Impala’s backseat and shoving Castiel inside before sliding in the driver’s seat and turning the engine over.  

“It’s Cas they want,” Dean had said.  Castiel remembers how bright his eyes were that night.  Later he thinks it must have been tears, but he isn’t sure.  “And they’re not getting him.”

There are no miracles tonight.  They have to stop for gas two hours out of Lebanon.  Dean begins to count their bad luck on his hand, holding up one finger in front of Castiel’s eyes.  

"The bunker," he says.  It’s an eulogy and a warning.  It’s the first sign, Castiel understands, the first indicator that they’re in for another run of bad luck.  

Castiel thinks that Dean and Sam are overdue for something good. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's more bad luck waiting just down the road.

There's more bad luck waiting down the road.    
  
They are parked on the side of the road.  Sam is standing on the shoulder, beating the ash and soot off of his coat.  Dean is leaning over the hood of the Impala.  Castiel is watching him work, how his hands move so carefully, how he touches everything like it's all important, as though every small part here means something to him.  Dean leans inside the car and sticks his key in the ignition.  He turns the engine over, and it sputters, then goes quiet.    
  
Sam is glancing over at his brother.  Dean turns the engine off.  He sits very quietly for a moment, then tries again.  The engine is silent.  
  
“No,” Dean says.  He presses the heel of his hand against his forehead. “No,” he says again.  He slams his hand against the steering wheel.  Castiel feels himself jump at the sound.  “No,” Dean is saying, over and over.  He pounds his fist against the wheel until something seems to pass.  He leans back against the seat and puts his hands over his eyes.  
  
Sam shucks his coat into the backseat, next to Castiel.  He slides inside the car next to his brother.  “Dean,” Sam says quietly.  
  
“We don’t have time for this,” Dean says hollowly. He drags his hands down his face, covers his mouth and speaks through his fingers.  "They’ll catch up.  They’ll find us.  They’ll take him away.”    
  
Castiel stares out the window. and stays silent.  Sam and Dean are speaking to each other in a way that sounds private, the way they do sometimes.  He doesn't think they mean it to come across the way it does.  Like he shouldn't be there, listening in.  Like he is overhearing something he shouldn’t.    
  
Dean shoves the door open and gets out of the car and slams the door behind him.  He stands out there for a while.  Hands shoved deep inside his pockets, shoulders drawn up.  Sam watches him through the windshield.  
  
“It’s all right,” Castiel says to Sam.  “You’ve done enough.  I can go on alone.  I could manage from here.”  
  
In the front seat, Sam turns his head.  In the last of the daylight Castiel can see that his hair has been singed at the ends and that his bare arms are covered with small blackened hairs.  He smells like smoke and burnt hair.  Castiel supposes that he smells like that too. They all must.  
  
"What do you mean?" Sam asks.  "You're with us.  We can't let you go.  We're all in this together."  
  
\--  
  
Dean locks the Impala’s doors behind them.  He remains by the Impala’s side for a moment, just touching her hood with the tips of his fingers.  Castiel watches the way his fingers trace over his car, touching her sides like he's touching skin.  He feels helpless.  It’s a feeling he’s starting to hate.   
  
“Let’s go,” Dean says finally.  His voice is rough.  Castiel has been thinking it’s from all the smoke they breathed in during the fire, but maybe that’s not it after all.  He is beginning to understand that there are many things he does not understand.  About Dean.  About everything.  There are many things, some in heaven but most here on earth.  He is beginning to believe that he understands Dean least of all.  
  
He watches Dean turn away from the Impala and shove the keys in his coat pocket.  Dean lifts his head to say in that rough voice, “We've got to get moving.”    
  
They are headed towards the nearest town.  Castiel’s lungs burn as he walks.  Dean walks beside him, even though he doesn't have to.  Dean bumps against Castiel’s shoulder gently, and Castiel thinks again, Yes.  There are many things.    
  
\---  
  
They find a hotel on the edge of town.  It's not the kind of place Dean and Sam usually pick.  Dean tries to pay with a credit card, but the concierge hands it back, saying that it has been declined.   
  
"No reward points tonight," Dean tries to joke.  For one terrible moment Castiel thinks Dean is going to make them leave this place and keep walking.  That they've drawn attention to themselves; they'll be caught if they stay.  But Dean is looking at him and something shifts in his face.  He pulls Sam and Castiel aside and asks them to empty their pockets for cash.  
  
Castiel rifles through his coat pockets, then his jeans, but he doesn’t have much to offer.  Just a few twenties and several crumpled dollar bills.  But there is enough in Sam and Dean’s pocket’s to rent a room for the night.  
  
They take a room with two beds and ask for a rollaway cot.  Sam has showed him, in the past, how to play rock-paper-scissors, a process Sam has explained will determine which lucky two get to sleep in beds, and which unlucky third gets to sleep on the cot.  After a single tactical error in his first match, Castiel would never have to sleep on cots ever again, but on the nights when he gets a double and Sam has to curl his legs up in order to fit on the cot, he feels an actual pain in his chest.  These days, Castiel always makes sure he loses, but this time Sam offers him his bed anyways.  
  
“I’m fine,” Castiel says.  
  
“Well,” says Sam, hesitant, “it’s not really fair, is it?”  
  
“But I lost,” Castiel says.  “Of course it’s fair.”  
  
“No, no,” Sam says, “not the losing.  That game’s corrupt, anyway. I know you’ve figured it out by now.  We’re really supposed to take turns.”  
  
“You won, though,” Castiel says obstinately.    
  
Sam signs and runs his fingers through his hair.  “Okay,” he says.  “Okay.”  
  
\---  
  
Sam and Dean fall asleep as soon as their bodies hit the beds.  Dean doesn't even bother to take his coat or shoes off, but Sam has hung his coat carefully on the back of the bathroom door. Castiel shifts on his side on the rollaway, then to his back, then to his side again.  After a while he can see them despite the dark, the shape of Dean on his back, arms outstretched; the shape of Sam, curled up on his side.    
  
Neither Dean nor Sam stirs when Castiel slips out the door.  He walks down the corridor past the vending machines and goes out to the parking lot.    
  
He stands there underneath the dim streetlights and blinks into the night and says a few things aloud, not to anyone, not knowing why.  
  
"How could you do this to them?” he asks.  “You took everything they had away from them.  They don’t deserve this.”  
  
He stands there for what feels like an eternity, waiting, but nothing happens.  He hadn’t even expected anything, so he doesn’t quite understand why he feels so angry when he turns to go back inside.  


	3. Chapter 3

Castiel has never believed in luck before, not when he had been able to open his eyes in every dimension at once and see every possible knot and twist that a single choice, one infinitesimally small decision could create.  
  
Now he is a human, and somehow he finds he wants something to hang on to, he is finding that he wants to keep something around to believe in.  He has seen this kind of desperate desire for belief before, even in Sam and Dean.  They used to call it hope.  Now they don’t.  So Castiel keeps it for them, and he is starting to call it luck, because he has no better word for it.  While he has no hard evidence to prove the existence of good luck, he’s starting to develop a certain definite belief in its counterpart.    
  
“That won’t work,” Sam tells him, when he mentions it.  “You can’t chose to believe in just one or the other.  You can’t believe in the devil and not believe in God, too.”  Castiel is still trying to figure out if that means that Sam still thinks there might be a god out there, still able to hear his prayers, a god who maybe still be listening even if He no longer cares.  Castiel used to believe that He did, even though God had never answered any prayers before. At least, not his own. Castiel knows there was a time when God had once listened to the prayers of his boys, and delivered them from harm. At one time that had been enough to give him a measure of faith.    
  
He finds himself wondering if Sam still prays.  He is glad, all of a sudden, that if Sam does, he is no longer able to hear him.    
  
The third terrible thing hasn’t happened yet.  Castiel feels on edge.  He knows he shouldn't believe in luck, but he can’t help it; he’s waiting for the next disaster to strike.  He thinks Sam and Dean feel the same.  Sam’s sentences trail off before he finishes a thought.  Dean stares at the blank walls of their motel room and doesn’t seem to notice when Sam goes quiet.  Castiel thinks they must be waiting for a new disaster, too.  
  
They visit the continental breakfast early, because Dean says there’ll be more food and what’s there will be better quality.  The eggs, Dean says, might just taste a little less like worn tires and a little more like eggs, if they’re lucky.  Castiel doesn’t bother to point out the current development of their luck does not seem likely to involve decent eggs.  
  
Dean rushes him through his shower, pounding on the thin wall between their room and the bathroom until plaster crumbles down from the ceiling.   They have nothing.  Sam and Dean hadn’t left spare duffle bags in the Impala, so: No spare toothbrushes, no spare bottles of shampoo, no spare clothes.  Sam had used up all their shampoo and conditioner samples provided in their room, so Castiel had been forced to add water to the mostly-empty shampoo bottle and then shake it up until he could see little bubbles through the pale pink plastic bottle, and hope that there would be enough left to get the smell of smoke out of his hair.  There hadn’t been quite enough, but Castiel guesses it doesn’t matter.  He has no clean clothes to change into anyway.  
  
He has no toothbrush either.  He supposes it must've burned in the fire along with everything else. Castiel is staring at the two toothbrushes sitting on the edge of the sink.   He has noticed, lately, that everything comes in twos.  Two beds to a hotel room.  Two plates and two cups and two saucers, sold by the pair at the thrift stores where Dean and Sam always shop.  Two table lamps on the nightstands, two pairs of underwear sold in a pack.  This morning Dean had gone to Wal-Green’s with one of their last remaining five dollar bills and had returned with salve for their burns and bandages and two toothbrushes, packaged together.  Castiel had looked at the two toothbrushes and wondered which one was supposed to be his, and if he was supposed to share.  
  
“We can ask for another one at the front,”  Dean had said, but he had never gone back up to the receptionist’s desk to ask, and Castiel hadn’t bothered to remind him.  Now he settles for applying some toothpaste to the tip of his finger and swishing it around in his mouth for a few minutes.   “Hurry up,” Dean is saying when he finally leaves the bathroom.    
  
At the breakfast buffet, Castiel sees Sam and Dean shoving food in their pockets.  Apples and granola bars and danishes.  Castiel makes a plate with a box of cereal and some of the scrambled eggs, a banana and one of the danishes.  The danishes are cherry-flavored and only a little stale, so Castiel goes back and takes three more danishes and wraps two of them up in a napkin and hides them inside his coat pocket.    
  
“These are good,” he says, and hands Dean the third danish.  He spends the rest of the meal watching Dean brush crumbs away from the corners of his mouth after every bite.    
  
They have the room until eleven, so afterwards they head back to their room and empty their pockets into a small pile of cash in the middle of one of the beds and count the remainder of their money.  Dean is afraid to keep spending their cash.  

“Only in a real emergency,” he says.  Castiel wonders what a real emergency means to Dean.  Their current situation has begun to take on the atmosphere of an emergency to him.   
  
“What are we going do?” Castiel asks.  “We’ve got no car, no money.  Nothing.”    
  
“We’ll think of something,” Dean says.  He collects the money, all $297.87 of their cash and change, and folds it carefully in his wallet.  Castiel doesn’t know much, but he knows that this is not enough.  Not enough for food for three men, not enough for motel rooms or gas or to pay for the Impala’s repairs.    
  
But Dean is whistling like it doesn’t matter that they don’t have enough to live on.  He smiles at Castiel, easy.  His eyes crinkle at the corners.  That doesn’t seem quite right.  Castiel had woken up in the middle of the night hearing Dean crying quietly into his pillow.  He had stayed awake and had wished, much more strongly than he had wished anything before in his entire life, that he had simply allowed the angels to take him, so that Dean’s home would have been spared.  But Dean is smiling up at Castiel like everything will be all right, and Castiel still doesn’t understand.   


	4. Chapter 4

Castiel no longer knows the value of things.  Lately he has been forced to judge the value of certain objects by price tags.  He has not yet determined a system for judging the value of everything else.  A hot dog is one-twenty-seven, with tax. A gallon of milk is three-ninety-nine. A tank of gas can cost Dean over fifty dollars these days.    
  
A candy bar from the hotel vending machine is $1.25. He inserts his change and selects a Payday and the machine does nothing. He hits the return money button, but nothing happens at the coin return either.  He feels a tight, slow band of anger curling through him.  He tries to collect himself.   It’s only a machine, he tells himself. There is no use feeling anything because of a machine.  It’s not a person.  It’s not anything he can fix.  But he can’t stop it, his anger. It bubbles up and into his hands. He has to do something with it.    
  
He takes hold of the vending machine and shakes it and when nothing changes, not his anger or the condition of his hunger, then he lets go of the machine and sets to pounding its side with his fist.  “God damn it,” he says.    
  
He walks back to their hotel room and waits for the anger to die away. It does, gradually.   But when he is no longer angry, a feeling of weariness climbs inside him and sits, still and quiet inside his chest.  It hurts worse than anger.  He wants this all to be over.    
  
Dean checks them out of the hotel at eleven.  Sam and Castiel wait for him in the parking lot, ready to go.  Dean walks out of the lobby with two bottles of water in his hand.  He gives one to Sam and the other to Castiel.    
  
“You need one, too,” Castiel says.     
  
“Sam and I can share,” says Dean.  He shoves his hands inside his coat pockets.  “Let’s get out of here,” he adds, so they start walking.     
  
It’s a long walk back to where they left the Impala, miles away.  The wind cuts through Castiel’s jacket and gray plaid button-down underneath, but the sun is warm on his face, and Dean is walking next to Sam several paces ahead and swinging his arms with every step.    
  
The Impala is right where they left her.  Castiel is watching Dean’s face when they get close enough to see the dusty black car up ahead.  Dean closes his eyes, just for a moment.  It looks like relief, but when he opens them back up his face is still. Castiel can’t read it.  
  
Dean tries the engine and nothing happens.    
  
“What now?” Castiel asks.    
  
“Don’t worry,” Dean says.  “I’ve got a plan.”  Castiel leans against the Impala's trunk and watches Dean put her in neutral.  “Come on, Cas,” Dean says.  “We need your help.”  
  
Castiel stands next to Sam and places his hands on the Impala’s bumper and pushes.  Dean sits in the driver’s seat and steers.  They push the Impala alongside the highway, on the edge of the road, for miles and miles, until the wind has blown his face cold and tight, until Castiel’s arms are shaking and his thighs are burnings and his throat feels choked with dust.  
  
Dean wants to stop at a Gas ‘N Sip that he guesses is a half-mile out.  Sam picks up the pace.  He’s the first one to let go of the Impala’s bumper in the paring lot and push through the gas station’s glass doors, and he is the first person in the men’s room.  Dean is hovering just past the bathroom doors, using the water fountain to splash water on his face.  Castiel can see that he’s going to be last in line.      
  
He spends the time walking up and down the aisles, looking. Sometimes when they stop for gas, Dean will pay inside the gas station and come back out to the car with broad handfuls of ninety-nine cent bags of candy, hot tamales and butterscotch and the circus peanuts that Dean claims to hate but always eats and the starlite peppermints that Castiel really does hate and never eats, and bottles of Diet Coke to soothe Castiel’s caffeine headaches and blue Powerade for Sam and the orange Fantas that Dean drinks himself sometimes, though not always.   
  
Castiel is looking without really noticing the shapes of cigarette packages behind the counter.  Is that what they are? he’s wondering.    No, they’re really cigarette packages, but only when he squints.  When he looks at them straight on, looking through the streaky glass case they’re locked inside, they’re something else.  Something sinister, maybe. Castiel can’t be sure. He is never sure of anything anymore.  Sometimes, like right now, he feels as though he is still capable of being more than one place at once, looking at through layers and layers of frosted glass panels.  Sometimes he thinks Dean might notice.  At times, when he feels clouded and thin and superimposed upon himself, Dean will touch his arm until he looks back into Dean’s eyes.  Dean will talk to him in a low, quiet voice until Castiel says something back, and then he will let go.    
  
Dean is at his shoulder.  He hasn’t let go of Castiel’s arm yet.   “I bet I know what you want,” Dean is saying.  “You want ice cream.”  Castiel shakes his head no.  “You sure?” Dean says, but Castiel knows how much money is left in Dean’s wallet.    
  
“I’m fine,” Castiel says.  Dean nods his head like he believes it, but then he opens up the glass lid and takes out a Klondike bar anyways, and goes over to the register to pay.    
  
Castiel is sitting on the edge of the concrete when Dean comes back out with a plastic bag in his hands.  He sits down on the concrete right beside Castiel and hands him the ice cream bar and takes out a roll of tickets.  Castiel holds the ice cream loosely in his hand without opening the wrapper.  It’s too cold for ice cream, he’s thinking.  “What are those?” he asks, looking over Dean’s tickets.  
  
“Scratch-offs,” Dean says.   He shows Castiel.  There are three tickets in his hand.  “I’ve got a feeling,” Dean says.  “Our luck’s about to change.”   He sits there and busily applies the back of his knife to the the tickets.    
  
Castiel is starting to feel interested.  “Did you win?” he asks Dean.  
  
Dean shakes his head and tosses the first ticket back in the plastic bag.  “Nah,” he says.  “We never do.”  Castiel already knows.  It’s because of their luck: It’s no good.  He wonders why Dean is even playing.    
  
“We always buy a ticket though, me and Sam,” Dean says.  “Just in case.”  He tries the next ticket, and shakes his head sadly.  “Here,” Dean says.  “You try.”  
  
Dean gives him the last scratch-off.  He leans over Castiel’s shoulder while Castiel scratches the ticket with the edge of a penny he’d taken a long time ago from a take-a-penny, leave-a-penny jar.  "Hey, look at that," Dean says.  "You're a winner!"  
  
“I am?” he asks. He feels pleased.  Mostly because Dean is.  He’s never sure why Dean’s moods and feelings, which seem to lift and fall in mysterious, fluctuating patterns, always seem to shift his own.  Like when he is angry, and Dean smiles at him, and suddenly he isn’t angry anymore, but pleased and confused and a little annoyed.  Like he has no power over anything he feels, not as long as Dean is around.    
  
"You bet." Dean snatches the ticket out of his hands and hauls himself to his feet.  They go back inside the gas station and hand the ticket over to the cashier.  The cashier scans the ticket, then opens the cash register.  She counts out a few bills.  "It's your lucky day," she says, and hands him the money.  
  
Castiel counts it out.  "Three dollars," he says, feeling rather blank.  
  
"I know, I know," Dean says.  "What can you do with three measly bucks?"  
  
Castiel can think of many things.  He stares down at the folded bills in his hand and thinks.  You could buy three of the ninety-nine cent bags of candy.  You could buy three of the hot dogs spinning slowly on the rotisserie to his left, and you could add ketchup and mustard and relish and onions. You could buy a couple bottles of water. You could buy three Slim-Jims or a tube of toothpaste. Three dollars would get you a couple of loads of laundry at the Laundromat.  Three dollars could buy you a hamburger and fries at McDonald's.  He thinks about all these things.    
  
Instead, at Dean’s suggestion, he buys two more scratch-off tickets.  He scratches off the foil of the first ticket, but it is not worth anything.  Neither is the second.  He is beginning to feel slightly cheated.    
  
“You win some, you lose some,” Dean tells him kindly.  "You can always play again.  Maybe you'll keep on winning."  
  
Castiel keeps the last dollar.  He folds it up and keeps it in his coat pocket.  They go back outside and sit on the concrete ledge and watch Sam stand in the grass by the parking lot pavement and stretch his arms over his head, and then down to his feet.    
  
Dean unwraps the ice cream and breaks it in half.  He sticks one half in his mouth, the whole half of the ice cream all at once, and then hands the other half to Castiel.  
  
“Thanks,” Castiel says.  He peels back the flimsy wrapping on his half of the ice cream and nibbles his half slowly while Dean tells him about playing the lottery.  Dean and Sam make a ritual around it.  They only stop at certain kinds of gas station to buy the tickets, and they only pay for it in exact change.  There are different ways to play the lottery.  Dean favors Megamillions, which cost a dollar.  Scratch-offs can cost more, if you want.  There's Powerball and Daily 3s and Fantasy Five.  They store the tickets under the floorboards of the Impala until the night the lottery numbers will be drawn, and then Dean will tuck the ticket in his back pocket until it’s time to turn on the news and watch the drawing.    
  
Dean leans into Castiel’s side and tells him laughingly about everything he intends to do with his money once they win, him and Sam, all the things they’ll buy when they’re rich.   
  
“We’ll buy some land and build a house,” he says, right into Castiel’s ear.  “A real one this time, with a yard and and a pantry and everything.  Dean tells Castiel about all the things he wants to buy for the house he intends to build one day.    A leafblower. Dean prefers the kind that uses gas. He says the electric ones are no better than brooms.  A tool for edging the parts of the lawn that creep over on the pavement.  Dean claims he needs power tools.  He needs  a backup generator and a garden hose.  
  
Castiel blinks.  “For what garden?” Castiel asks him.  
  
Dean is prepared to discuss tomatoes.  Maybe some potted geraniums.  “But,” he  clarifies, “nothing stupid and green, like spinach.  No vegetables.”  Dean wants to plant a hedge around his house, with holly and boxwoods and rhododendrons and azaleas.  
  
“One of us wins the jackpot, we’ll split it,” Dean says, split the money right down the middle, him and Sam and Castiel.  
  
Castiel stirs.  He turns his face so that Dean’s breath doesn’t tickle his ear.  “You do realize,” Castiel says to Dean, “the odds of one of us winning the lottery is--”  
  
But Dean cuts him off.  “You never know,” Dean tells him comfortably. “We might get lucky, some day.”    Castiel watches Dean drop the empty wrapper on the parking lot.    
  
“You shouldn’t litter,” Castiel says. Dean does sigh. He does roll his eyes. But he picks up the wrapper and shoves it in his pocket and Castiel wonders, would he do that for Sam? for anyone else? or is it just me?  Castiel thinks about the absurd things Dean says sometimes, like Sharing is caring. Whatever that means.  Dean wants to build a house.  Dean is singing a song under his breath, so quietly that Castiel can’t hear the words.  Castiel hasn’t seen him this light in years.    
  
“How are you so happy?” he asks.    
  
Dean stops his song long enough to shoot him a big dopey grin.  It reminds Castiel of something. Maybe the dogs he has seen driving past on the road, with their heads hanging out the window and wind pushing up their ears.  “Because,” Dean says. “You’re okay.  And we’re together.  That's enough for me."


	5. Chapter 5

Castiel looks for signs.  Sometimes he gets tired of choices, sometimes he grows weary of making decisions.  He has so many questions these days, and sometimes he just wants answers.  He has formed a horoscope of sorts, reading church marques, road signs, billboards, scraps of paper he picks up off the ground.  He will close his eyes and ask a question, and when he opens his eyes again sometimes the answer will be right there in front of him, already spelled out, just waiting for him to nod and accept it.    
  
Dean says they can’t afford a tow, so they keep pushing the Impala on the side of the highway into town, past fields and farmland and several small churches, built out of brick and stone.  As they push past the churches, he looks for signs.  When will this be over? he asks silently, but the next sign he sees only says THE LORD ANSWERS KNEE-MAIL.  Not helpful.  He changes his question.  When will we eat again? he asks, but there isn’t another church for a long time, and when they push past a weathered Episcopalian church Castiel can only see a faded signs that says BINGO WEDNESDAY NIGHT - CANCELLED.  Not a good sign.  
  
They take turns steering the car.  Dean sticks his hand out the window and waves at Sam and Castiel to stop pushing, and climbs out.    
  
“Someone else’s turn,” he says.  “Cas, you want a break?”  
  
Castiel does.  But instead he says, “Sam?”   Sam doesn’t argue.  He opens the door and drops inside the Impala.  It makes Castiel feel good, even though his arms are aching and his face feels raw from the cold air.    
  
No one complains about being hungry, though Castiel is. He waits and waits for Dean to say, Hang on, guys, I can’t take it any longer, we gotta stop for food.  For Sam to say, All right, only I want real food, not some greasy fried crap.  But Dean doesn’t say anything about being hungry, and neither does Sam, and Castiel doesn't quite feel as though it is his right to complain.  Not when Dean is at his side, his shoulder pressed up against Castiel's, not when he and Sam are enduring this for his sake.  
  
Dean lets them stop for the night, on the side of the empty highway.  Sam climbs into the backseat and passes out. Castiel can see him in the rearview mirror, with his head propped up on a rolled-up flannel shirt, one leg leaning against the back of the seat and the other resting on the floorboards.  Castiel doesn't know how Sam can sleep like that. Experience, maybe.  Habit.  This is Sam's normal.  Castiel is tired, but he can’t fall asleep.  His stomach aches with emptiness.  So he sits up in the front next to Dean and tries to forget.  
  
It’s sort of nice.  Dean leans his back against the the door and stretches out and puts his booted feet on Castiel’s thighs and talks quietly.  He talks about winning the lottery. Dean talks about it like it’s really going to happen.    
  
“When we win the lottery, I’ll buy you steak every day,” Dean says.  “Steak and ice cream.  We’ll live the high life.  The good life.  You believe me?”  
  
Castiel almost smiles, at that.  “Yes,” he says.  “I believe you.”  
  
Around two in the morning a police car pulls over and parks beside the Impala.  Castiel sees the lights flashing in the Impala’s rear view mirror, and it blinds him for a long moment.  Then there is another light, sweeping inside the Impala, illuminating Sam’s forehead, the rest of his face buried underneath his jacket, shining against the palm of Dean’s hand as he shields his eyes from the brightness.    
  
“You boys in trouble?” the officer asks.  
  
“Nah,” says Dean.  “No trouble at all,” and the officer looks at him with a mild, weary face.  “We got help on the way,” Dean tells him.  Castiel knows Dean is lying through his teeth, but the officer nods and taps his flashlight against the window once and leaves, and Dean lets out a long breath.  He was worried, Castiel realizes.    
  
Sam never even wakes up, but it takes Dean a long time to fall asleep again.  Castiel watches it happen.  He watches Dean’s face soften in sleep.  He watches Dean’s chest rise and fall and hears Dean's breaths start to even out.  
  
He waits for a sign.


	6. Chapter 6

“Stop here,” Dean says.  Castiel doesn’t quite understand at first.  He is so used to walking now; all he has wanted for the past hour is to sit down, but his body isn’t ready to stop moving yet.     
  
Dean has halted them at a trailer park just outside the main strip of the town, behind a row of gas stations and liquor stores and pawn shops.  Castiel isn’t exactly sure what they’re doing here, but he is happy to sit down on the trunk of the Impala and rest his feet on the bumper and sit still for a while.    
  
Dean and Sam go inside one of the trailers while Castiel waits outside.  He is looking around, at the sagging, faded prefabricated buildings, at the gravel parking lot, at the small swing set on the edge of the property underneath an oak tree .  There are trucks and vans and cars on blocks.  The Impala wouldn’t look very out of place here, he thinks. Neither would he or Sam or Dean.  They are all tired and faded and a bit down on their luck.  
  
Dean comes back out looking pleased.  “A hundred bucks a week,” he reports.  Castiel is impressed. They have paid more than that for one night at a hotel before.  He is holding a single key in his hand.  No one comes out to show them to their trailer.  Castiel follows Sam and Dean to the park of the trailer park, to number twenty-six.    
  
Dean unlocks the door to the trailer and a slightly musty, earthy odor drifts out.  It’s a perfectly adequate space.  There is a small kitchen, a small living area, two small rooms, a small bathroom.  There is a an old television and a faded floral couch in the living room and and a mattress and box spring in each of the bedrooms and a table with two chairs by the kitchen.    
  
“Home sweet home,” Dean says.  He falls face-first on the couch, makes a horrified wheezing noise, and rolls off.  “Jesus,” he says, and coughs, loudly, until Sam beats him on the back with a fist.  
  
“We’ll be okay for a week,” Dean says.  “It’ll give me time to fix the car.  We’ll just have to pinch pennies.”  He pulls out his wallet and counts through their money again.  He closes his wallet thoughtfully.  Castiel feels on edge.  “I’m starving,” Dean says finally, and Castiel lets out a sigh of relief.    
  
“I would kill for Chinese food,” Sam says.  He sounds like he means it.  Castiel thinks, Me too.  Chinese food or tacos or even just gas station hot dogs.  Even the truck stop fried fish sandwich he had eaten once, the one that Dean had warned him off of but eventually bought for him when Castiel had asked for it.  It had made him spend hours in the bathroom and given him cramps and Castiel would eat it right now, in a heartbeat.  It would be worth it.  
  
Castiel knows they can’t really afford Chinese food.  Instead they lock the trailer door behind them and walk down the road to a Food Lion and spend ten dollars on food for dinner.  Dean spends some money in the picnic aisle, buying a box of plastic forks and knives and spoons and a bag of red plastic Solo cups and plastic plates and bowls.    
  
Dean clings tightly to the shopping basket.  He won’t let Sam add anything fresh to the basket, not sandwich meat or a bag of salad or a half-gallon of milk.    
  
“It’ll just go bad,” Dean says.    
  
“We have a fridge,” Sam argues.  “We even have an oven.  A microwave.  A toaster oven.”  
  
Dean keeps his eyes resolutely on the canned vegetables.  He doesn’t look at Sam.  He doesn’t look at Castiel.  He just grabs a can of diced tomatoes and a box of rice.  “We won’t be here that long,” he says.  Instead Dean fills up their basket with boxes of macaroni and cheese and peanut butter and Saltine crackers.  Dean adds a handful of bags of chicken-flavored Ramen noodles.  
  
“It’s just like Chinese food,” he tells Castiel.  “You like teriyaki beef, right?” Dean asks, and Castiel says yes.  Dean grabs a few bags of Ramen noodles, beef-flavored, and adds them to the basket.  He grabs bags of the shrimp-flavored Ramen noodles and the chili flavored Ramen noodles.  “A regular buffet.”    
  
Dean adds a frozen entree from the freezer section, egg rolls and fortune cookies and rice, and that is what they eat for dinner, back at the trailer: Boiled noodles flavored with packets of chicken and beef and shrimp and too much salt and MSG.  There are no sheets on the mattresses, there are no cups or plates in the kitchen, there are no pots or pans, but there is a coffee pot.  Dean microwaves the egg rolls on a paper plate and Sam washes out the coffee pot in the sink and uses it to cook the noodles. He puts the Ramen noodles in the coffee pot and lets the hot water run over them until the noodles are soft and limp.  
  
Dean and Sam eat at the table.  There isn’t a third chair.  Castiel sits on the couch and tries not to spill noodles on the couch cushions.  He eats two packages of the beef-flavored noodles and an egg roll and feels sick.    
  
Dean breaks open the fortune cookies afterwards.  He passes them around, one to Sam and another to Castiel.  Dean snaps his fortune cookie and half and pulls out the fortune.  He reads the fortune first, before he eats the cookie. So does Sam.  Both Dean and Sam read their fortunes and laugh quietly to themselves, and throw the fortune in the plastic Food Lion bag where they have been keeping all their trash.  
  
Castiel breaks open his fortune cookie slowly so that the crumbs don’t get everywhere, but he can’t help it, a few pieces break off and fall to the floor. So does his fortune.  He leaves the fortune on the floor and he eats the remaining pieces of his cookie.  He finds that he doesn’t like the taste very much.  It’s stale.    
  
“Don’t forget,” Dean says.  “Here’s your fortune.”  He picks it off the floor and hands it to Castiel.  
  
Castiel holds the tiny slip of paper between his thumb and finger and reads.  BE SURE TO HANDLE FINANCIAL AFFAIRS WISELY.    
  
\--  
  
Sam takes one of the bedrooms.  Dean is supposed to be sleeping in the other room, but instead Dean settles down on the couch beside Castiel and picks up the remote.  He flicks through channels, old movies, late night reruns of sitcoms from the eighties, then he suddenly stops on a commercial, where a woman with finely toned arms and long blonde hair poses in front of a treadmill.  
  
“What’s this?” Castiel asks, and Dean looks at him, eyebrows raised.  
  
“QVC,” Deans says, “come on, Cas, you know.”  But Castiel doesn’t.  So Dean puts down the remote and tells him all about it, how you can buy anything you want, just by calling the number on the screen and giving away your credit card information, how everything is priced in multiples of $19.99.    
  
They stay up until three-thirty a.m. watching infomercials on the shopping channel, picking out their favorite gadgets and tools, making lists of items that each of them wants the most.  Dean points out all the stuff they’ll need for a new house.  Dean grabs an old receipt from his jacket pocket and a pencil and writes down a list.  Castiel leans over his shoulder and reads what Dean's written.  Dean wants a Black and Decker drill and the accompanying 69-piece set of drill bits, a Nuwave hot plate, an Oreck Upright Classic Pro vacuum, an eight-pack of Scrub Daddy scented scrubs.  
  
“Let’s get something,” Dean says.    
  
So Dean pulls out his cellphone and Castiel memorizes the number on the television screen and Dean has him recite it back to him as he punches in the numbers. They wait on hold for a long time, but then a spokesperson answers the phone. Dean gives her the information off one of the stolen credit cards, and Castiel holds his breath while the numbers are run.  Dean has the package shipped to the postal box Dean and Sam still have in Lebanon, under the name J.S. Remington.  Dean orders a set of two screwdriver flashlights.  The infomercial assures them that it is a best selling item.  
  
“It’ll be waiting for us,” Dean is saying.  “We can go back for it someday.  When it's safe to go home.”  
  
Castiel looks at Dean’s face, at the dim light from the television diffused around him, that easy smile and eager hands, the excitement in his voice as he talks about home repairs and lawn mowers, and suddenly it comes to him.  He wants to buy Dean a house.  He wants to have enough money for that.  
  
When he slips his hand inside his coat pocket, he finds the dollar he’d won in the lottery.  It feels like a sign.


	7. Chapter 7

Castiel is learning about necessities.  He needs so many things.  He needs a toothbrush and toothpaste.  He needs a shirt and shoes and a belt in order to enter most establishments.  He needs food to eat and water to drink, at least six hours of sleep at night, and he needs a cup of coffee in the morning if he gets less than that.

He walks around their trailer, cataloging what they have.  Thinking about what they don’t have, things that most homes have.  Like the homes he’s seen on television.  A dishwasher.  Curtains, for the windows.  Brown plates for everyday and white porcelain plates for company and a paper towel holder.  We’re not staying, Dean keeps saying, we don’t need much, but Castiel is starting to see all the little things that they are doing without.  They have soap in the bathroom, but no shampoo.  They need sheets and blankets for the beds.  They need pots and pans, they need dish soap and rags.  They need quarters for the laundromat.  They need a change of clothes.

But Dean says there are more important things.  Like fixing the Impala.  He doesn’t say it to Castiel, but Castiel can hear them talking in those quiet voices on the other side of the thin walls: There isn’t enough money.  

Sam comes back to the kitchen first.  He looks at Castiel, like he always does, with the face Castiel can never quite understand.  Castiel stands by the sink and pushes back the broken blinds and stares out of the window as hard as he can.  He is pretending not to see all the spaces that he doesn't quite fit into between Dean and Sam yet, so that Dean and Sam can go on pretending not to see the way he is taking up all the spaces that used to be just theirs.  Instead he is watching the birds just outside their trailer, the small brown birds that hop along the gravel and dart underneath the cars in the parking lot.  There are many kinds of signs.  This is one, the birds turning their small quick brown heads to look at him before fluttering away.

“What are you looking at?” Sam asks.

Castiel lets the blinds fall back down to cover the window.  He flips the twisted slats, one by one, until every single one is straight again.  “Nothing,” he says.  “Just looking.”

Later that evening, Castiel walks down the street to the strip and finds the nearest gas station.  Before he goes in, he spends some time looking at the signs on the gas station’s windows, at the advertisements for Daily Doubles and Powerball, but all he has is a dollar and he’s not quite sure what to do, so when he enters, he walks up to the register and asks for one scratch-off.  He wins six dollars.  He spends all but one dollar buying more lottery tickets.  He makes sure to keep that one dollar in his pocket.  Just in case.

\--

Castiel goes back to the gas station the next day.  He has his scratch-off tickets in his jacket pocket, he is planning to cash them in.  He is tired and isn’t quite paying attention to what’s going on around him.  He lets people bump into him, he stands there blocking the door for too long and allowing people walking back out to graze him with their shoulders.  

He has never gotten used to the way people flinch at him, now that he is human.  Now that he wears rough work boots and lives out of a car and lets his hair grow out and hanging into his eyes.  No one smiles at him anymore.  No one will stand too close to him.  It had taken him a while to notice, but it happens every time.  How the eyes of strangers will pass over him without stopping.  He is nothing to them.  People pretend not to see him, except when he is standing in the way.  He shakes his head, trying to get things clear, and moves to stand in the line by the counter.

“He smells,” he overhears a girl saying in front of him in the line, but he doesn’t think anything of it until he notices an older woman grab her arm.  “That’s rude,” the woman says, so quietly that almost no one could overhear, only Castiel can.  He looks around uncomfortably, thinking surely it isn’t him.  

He knows it isn’t him.  He knows.

But it seems that it is him.

He is so embarrassed that he wants to die.  He wishes he could just disappear.  I smell, he keeps thinking with horror. I smell. No one will stand next to me. Because I smell. Everyone can smell how bad I am.

Castiel breaks out of the line.  He goes to the bathroom and pulls up the corner of his shirt and sniffs.  He takes off his jacket and holds it up to his face and breathes it in and he realizes it is true.  He does smell.  

He waits until the bathroom is mostly empty, then pulls a wad of paper towels from the dispenser and dampens them under the faucet and scrubs at his face.  He takes the paper towels into a bathroom stall and takes off his shirt and wipes down his chest and under his arms and behind his neck.  He even goes through the cabinet under the bathroom sink and finds a canister of Glade Fresh Linen air freshener and sprays it all over his jacket and under the arms of his shirt and all over his pants.

He looks at himself. Castiel has never thought of himself as unappealing before. But now he sees that he must be.

He stares at his face in the mirror. He examines it closely. He touches the lines of his face.  He touches the hair above his ears, the deep folds of his eyes, the curve of his ear. He finds himself wondering if he is in any way repulsive.  He keeps looking.  He doesn’t see anything about himself that could be described as bad. He thinks, after long moments of reflection, that he just looks tired. There are lines around his mouth, around his eyes. There is something wrong with his face.  But even though he looks and looks, he can’t decide what it is.  His hair is a little messy.  He has a little bit of stubble on his cheeks.  He looks at his nose, his mouth.  He tries to smile.

The change astonishes him.  Everything about his tired, anxious face seems to smooth out, relaxing. Even his eyes look different. There is a kind of lightness diffused around his face. Maybe, he thinks, maybe I don’t look so bad after all.  

I don’t understand why anyone doesn’t want to be near me now, he thinks.  Why not? So I smell.  I’m no different. I’m just the same.  Even as he thinks it he’s remembering again the looks he has seen on Dean’s face, he is remembering the way Dean’s shoulder keeps bumping into Castiel’s. Dean wouldn’t flinch, Castiel thinks fiercely. If he lets himself believe anything else of Dean, he’s afraid he might not be able to stop himself from crying.  Dean wouldn’t flinch, he tells himself.  He wills himself to believe in it. Dean wouldn’t, he tells himself.  I just know.

He takes the tickets and shoves them in the back pocket of his jeans.  

He leaves his jacket draped over the bathroom stall.


	8. Chapter 8

Castiel spends the last few hours of daylight outside in the gravel parking lot where Dean is looking at the Impala.  He watches Dean leaning under the hood.  He just stands there, watching.  Dean looks up and catches him.  Dean frowns, but all he says is, “Where’s your coat?”

“I lost it,” Castiel says.

Dean is still frowning.  “Go inside,” Dean says.  

That night, Sam shows him how to use the soap to wash his clothes in the sink.  Castiel carefully fishes out the scratch-offs out of his blue jeans pocket first.  He and Sam strip down and wash each item in the sink, one by one.  Sam takes Castiel’s t-shirt out of his uncertain hands and shows him how to scrub hard at each stain.  Sam’s fingers brush against Castiel’s when their hands are swirling their socks around in the hot soapy water in the sink, but Sam doesn’t pull away.  Castiel is finding that he likes it, likes knocking his elbows against Sam’s, likes bumping shoulders with Dean.  It makes him feel like he’s really here.  Is this something humans need? Castiel is wondering.  He is starting to think it might be.

They go on standing there in the kitchen in their underwear, wringing out t-shirts and flannel shirts and hanging their jeans on the backs of the kitchen chairs to dry, and Sam heats up water in the coffee pot and pours it into two plastic cups and makes them tea with tea bags stolen from the last motel they’d stayed in.  

Sam hands a cup of green tea to Castiel and keeps the decaf Earl Grey Breakfast Blend for himself.  Castiel curls his fingers around the cup and a pleasant warmth seeps under his skin and into his bones.  It feels like warm wet hands passing a t-shirt back and forth.  It feels like Dean’s sturdy hands gripping his shoulder tight inside a burning building and pulling him out the door and towards the car.  

Dean comes inside from the parking lot and nags at Castiel to buy a coat.  “You need another one,” he warns. “It’s too cold not to have one,” he says.  Castiel has been finding himself hunching his shoulders underneath his flannel shirt.  He is beginning to think that Dean is right.   “I’ll be fine,” Castiel says anyway. He doesn’t know why he keeps saying those words. He says them to almost everything Dean or Sam has said to him since he fell.  He doesn’t need a coat.  He doesn’t want the motel bed with the Magic Fingers.  He doesn’t need to stop for dinner.  He can do without.  He’s fine.  

Sam says it is going to take all night for their clothes to dry.  Castiel tries to fall asleep, but the fabric of the couch is uncomfortable against his skin, he can’t stand the feel of it, so he gets up and pulls a chair to the small window by the front door and watches the dark trees moving against the darker sky until morning.  

His jeans dry overnight. When he goes to put them on, he finds that they are stiff.  The denim scratches against his legs whenever he takes a step.

\--

In the morning, Castiel takes the scratch-off tickets back to the gas station and cashes them in.  Between all his winning cards, he has won thirty-one dollars.  He takes the cash back to the trailer and passes it all over to Dean.

Dean is grinning at him.  It makes Castiel feel pleased.  “Knew you were lucky,” Dean says.  He licks his finger and counts through the money.  He counts out ten dollars and hands it to Sam, then counts out the same amount of money and offers it to Castiel.

Castiel looks at the money in Dean’s hand, being offered right back to him.  “No,” he says, puzzled.  “It’s all for you,” but Dean shakes his head.  

“That’s not how we do it,” Dean says.  “Remember? You’ve got to have your fair share.”

Castiel is feeling anxious.  This isn’t how it’s supposed to go, he thinks.  He had wanted to contribute, and now Dean is acting like thirty-one dollars doesn’t matter.  But Dean is still holding out his hand, so Castiel reluctantly takes the money.  And then Dean hands over his ten dollars as well, saying, "Go buy another coat."  

“I have everything I need,” he assures Dean.  But Dean doesn't pay him any attention.  He is glancing at Sam. “Cas needs a coat,” Dean explains slowly, and immediately Sam is handing over his ten dollars too.

“Sam, no,” Castiel says. “I can’t take your money.”  Sam just smiles back at him, open-mouthed, gentle and easy.  Like it’s nothing, to give Castiel all the money he has in the world.  “I don’t need it,” Castiel says helplessly.

“Yes, you do,” Dean says. “You think we’re gonna let you walk around without a coat? You’ll freeze to death.”

Castiel has a ledger running in his head, a list of everything Dean and Sam have provided for him since he fell.  All his clothes, all the food.  The gas they had spent driving to pick him up from where he had landed after falling.  “It’s too much,” he says.  

Dean is smiling at him.  “What do you mean, too much?” Dean says. 

“I don’t want to owe you,” Castiel says, and Dean’s smile drops off his face.

Dean's shoulders sag, just a little.  He looks almost hurt.  “You don’t owe me.”

Castiel feels angry and uncomfortable.  “I owe you,” he repeats.  “I’m supposed to pay you back.”

“No, you're not,” Dean says. “It’s a gift.  All of it.”

\--

There is a consignment store several blocks down the strip.  So Castiel goes inside and wanders up and down the aisles and looks at the racks of clothes.  He looks at the coats.  There are denim jackets and leather jackets and rugged coats with sheepskin collars and cuffs.  He wishes there was an easier way to make a decision.  He grabs all the coats that look like they’ll fit and places them inside a shopping cart.

For the next twenty minutes he just walks around with the cart, filling it up with anything that catches his eye: blue jeans, more flannel shirts like Dean’s and Sam’s, ones with purple and gray stripes and ones with red and green stripes and ones with blue and brown stripes.  he wanders over to the shoe section and tries on boots, but then he also tries on Nike sneakers and leather loafers and boat shoes and since they all fit and he can’t decide, he loads them all up in his cart too.

He adds a sleeping bag designed for subzero temperatures, he goes to the household goods section and adds tongs for grilling and plastic corn-on-the-cob holders and a pair of oven mitts featuring red polka-dots and chickens. He adds a coffee cup and a set of sheets and a meat thermometer.  He adds a welcome mat.

He finds himself standing by the furniture section, looking a kitchen chair.  One of the legs is broken; the chair shifts unevenly when he goes it sit in it, but he wants it anyway.  Is this trash? Castiel is wondering.  Or is it still useful?  And what’s the difference? What makes one old thing valuable and another garbage? He feels tired. He feels old. He wonders which one he would be, if he would be considered an antique or trash, rubbish, something that ought to have been thrown away years ago.  Used goods, he thinks.  He keeps his hand on the broken chair.  He wants to take it back to the trailer and tuck it in under the kitchen table.  

He’s standing there, right in the middle of the checkout line. His head aches and his feet hurt and he’s looking inside his cart and seeing all the items he’s grabbed off the shelves and clothing racks, piles of pants and shirts and underwear and belts.  Can I get all this for thirty dollars? he's wondering, is it worth it?  and then he’s suddenly realizing that he doesn’t need any of it at all.  

He doesn’t know why he feels like he needs it all. He just does.

Why do I want these things so badly? he asks himself.  These things won’t help.  They won’t make anything better.   It’s all nothing, he tells himself, amazed.  It’s nothing, so why does it feel so important?

We’d have everything we need, he answers himself.  Just like everyone else.

He reaches into the cart and takes one of the coats at random, a stiff gray coat made from heavy cloth.  He breaks out of the line and puts everything else back, the mat and the sheets and the coffee cup.  He joins the line again and listens to the speakers playing soft rock for several long minutes and pays fourteen dollars and ninety-nine cents for the coat.

\--

He takes the rest of the money and stops by a salon.  It’s not the right kind of place, he realizes the instant he walks through the doors into the cool, floral-smelling room.  He doesn’t see any other men here, only women: women reclining under large hairdryers, women with plastic smocks covering their clothes.  He thinks he might have made a mistake.  But the woman behind the receptionist's counter smiles at him and nods when he explains that he’d like a shave and a trim and tells him to wait in one of the chairs.  Ten dollars for a haircut, she says, and Castiel flinches at the price.  But even though he’s hesitating, his last fifteen dollars crumpling and wrinkled in his hand, surely, he finds himself thinking, surely I am worth ten dollars.  It is worth ten dollars to look more like a person.  He sits and flips through past issues of People magazine and USA Today until the receptionist calls him back.

A woman with cool hands and long fingernails takes him the shoulders and pushes him down into a swiveling chair.  She ties a smock around his shirt and takes out a water bottle and spritzes water on his hair until his hair is wet to the touch.  She talks constantly.  She leans his head over a sink and sprays his head with water.

“Just relax,” she says.  “You know, most people really like having their hair washed.”  

He closes his eyes and lets her voice fade into the background.   What am I worth? he is wondering.  And then there are hands in his hair.  

He feels the ache behind his eyelids that he has learned is a precursor to crying.

He stands up and takes off the robe.  “I’m sorry,” he says to the hairdresser, and leaves.


	9. Chapter 9

 He has started to misplace things.  The blue ballpoint pen he always keeps somewhere close, the comb he used to keep in his coat pocket, the gas receipts he always keeps and doesn’t know why.  A pocket knife he had picked up at a pawn shop once.  He loses little things.  Nothing important.  But Castiel finds himself reaching in his pocket for a pen that isn’t there, and it shakes him.  He shouldn't lose things. not when there is so little he has left.  He spends the afternoon searching for his comb before realizing that he had left it in the pocket of his old coat.  

He goes to Dean, frustrated and angry and embarrassed to have to ask.  “I need your comb,” he demands.

Dean is treating him with great patience, and it makes Castiel angrier.  “What for?”

Castiel huffs, “I don’t look right.  My hair looks wrong.”

Dean moves closer, and Castiel watches him narrowly, but then Dean stops and reaches out.  He places his hand on Castiel’s head and runs his fingers through his hair. “It doesn’t look wrong.  Not to me,” Dean says.

Castiel holds still.  Dean’s hands are hovering uncertainly over his head.  He looks outside the window and sees that there are small brown birds building a nest in the rain gutter on the trailer across the parking lot.  He might’ve known what kind of birds they are, before.  Did he ever know their name, or has he just forgotten?  Castiel does not know.   He stands still, just thinking, until Dean lifts his hand away

\--

He worries that he will lose something important.  He keeps his winning tickets close at hand, tucked in the front pocket of his shirt.  He keeps reaching inside the pocket as he walks to the gas station and runs his fingers over the edges of the tickets.  He needs to remind himself they are still there.  

Castiel loses his wallet somehow, in the span of time between walking into the gas station and getting to the front of the line at the counter.  He is patting his coat pockets, looking for his pen, when another customer comes up to him holding his almost-empty wallet, with the tiny blurred pixelated pictures of Dean and Sam tucked into its pockets and his Kansas driver’s license and his Food Lion MVP card, saying, I found this, is it yours?

“Yes,” he replies.  He takes back his wallet and tucks it carefully in his back pocket.  “I don’t know how I lost it.”  He gives up looking for his pen, and asks the sales associate for another.

Castiel has been practicing his signature.  Not his own name, but rather the name on the driver's license Sam has made for him.  Sam had sat him down at the kitchen table and stood over him, explaining.  You'll have to sign things, Sam had said, and your signature always has to match.  You can’t forget and sign your real name.  So Castiel had practiced signing the false name he has acquired, working down the lines on the yellow lined notepad Sam had given him.  He'd written out the name until it came easily, until it came to him without thinking.  Until he could pick up a pen and press it into paper and the name would flow straight out of his hands like it was really his own.  

He has to sign his signature to cash in the lottery tickets.  He is glad of all his practice.  These transactions leave him feeling unsettled.  Like he is waiting for someone to find him out.  As though when he hands over the signed ticket, the sales associate will inspect it and frown, and then step back from the counter, saying I'll have to get my manager.  And then Castiel will be known for what he is: A fraud.  

But it never happens.  He stands at the counter of the Gas ‘N Sip and the sales associate passes him another pen and he signs a name on the lottery ticket.  Not his own.  He hands the ticket over to the sales associate and looks at the display case of Zippo lighters, at the Black and Mild cigars behind the counter.  He slides his driver’s license across the counter, the one with his face in the picture and his handwriting in the signature underneath and the false Kansas address listed as his home address.  

The sales associate is counting out his winnings.  Castiel is still holding the pen.  He is thinking about practicing his signature.  How he’d written that false name over and over until he could write it in his sleep.  He is thinking now how strange it is, how in all this time, he has never written his own name.  Not as far as he can remember.  

He pats his pockets until he finds an old receipt.  He signs his name, Castiel.  Just to see how it looks written out in his imperfect human handwriting.  Sam says that each signature is unique, like fingerprints.  Castiel’s is angled and steep, slanting to the left.  It is narrow, with each letter pressing closely to the next.  He writes his name over and over again.  He doesn’t know why.   Castiel, he writes.  Castiel.  This is one thing he cannot lose.

\--

Castiel is on a winning streak.  He walks back to the trailer park with sixty-seven dollars in his pocket.  He is feeling rather pleased with himself.  It makes him not mind the small indignities he has to endure quite as much.  Like stepping in a puddle of cold, half-thawed mud and realizing with resignation that his boots are beginning to peel away from his soles.  

He takes off his coat and lays it down on the kitchen table and takes out his wallet.  He takes Dean’s coat from where it is hanging on the back of a chair and feels around in the pockets until he finds Dean’s wallet.  He opens it up and looks inside.  All the money Dean and Sam have left is tucked inside Dean’s wallet, along with a handful of false i.d.s, small slips of paper with phone numbers written in faded ink.  

Castiel slips sixty-six dollars next to Dean’s money.  There is something inside the billfold, too, a white slip of paper, folded in half.  He isn't sure what it is, so he takes it out and unfolds it.  Oh.  Dean’s fortune.  Lucky numbers 7 3 13 27 5.  You will get what your heart desires.

Dean walks inside the trailer and catches Castiel like that, standing in the middle of the kitchen with Dean’s wallet opened up in his hands, and Castiel feels something warm and heavy burning through him.  This must be shame, he supposes.  He has been caught doing something he shouldn’t.    

He thinks Dean is going to yell, but Dean just says, “Did you need some money?”

Castiel closes the wallet and places it back in Dean’s coat pocket.   He can’t seem to look Dean in the face.  Castiel says, “You kept your fortune.”

He hands Dean the coat, and Dean takes it out of Castiel’s hands.  Dean glances down at it, but he just says, “Well, it was a good one.  I wanted to see if it would come true.”


	10. Chapter 10

Sam brings back newspapers.  He holds a pen in one hand and taps it idly along the edge of the table and scans through each section slowly, then leaves them scattered over the surface of the table afterwards.  It is strangely reassuring, watching Sam cheerfully circling headlines that say MYSTERIOUS DEATHS and UNEXPLAINED INCIDENTS.  This could be just an ordinary morning, with Dean outside with his hands buried in the Impala’s engine and Sam looking for their next case.  Only it isn’t.  

Castiel reads the papers after Sam is finished with them.  He reads the cartoon strips first.  He likes some of them, though not all.  He like Peanuts and Calvin.  Sometimes they even make him laugh.  Other comics leave him bemused and resentful, annoyed at all the jokes he doesn’t understand.  After the comics, he reads the movie guides and book reviews.  He reads the editorials, because he is interested in learning about his opinions on other people’s opinions. He always glances at the sport section.  He is still learning about the things that ordinary people care about.  He is ordinary himself now, and he rather thinks he might be the kind of person who enjoys quoting baseball statistics at others, when asked if he follows sports.  

He has begun to read the horoscopes.   He does not have a sign of his own: The date of birth listed on his driver’s license is a lie.  But he always reads Dean’s and Sam’s. He looks for Sam’s first, Taurus.  Sam catches him frowning over it.

“What’s wrong?” Sam asks.

“Be careful,” he tells Sam.  “A loose end may come back to haunt you.”

Dean’s is Aquarius. WATCH YOUR BACK, his horoscope reads.  THE STARS ARE NOT ALIGNED IN YOUR FAVOR.  Castiel makes a careful note of the planetary alignment.  “I know what’s the matter with us,” he says to Sam confidentially.  

Sam humors him.  Sam always does.  “What is it?” he asks.

“Mars is in retrograde,” he explains.  

“Ah,” Sam says.  “No wonder.”

Castiel follows the advice column religiously. Just after Castiel had fallen, he’d taken to reading advice columns.  Dear Abby, Dear Prudence.  He reads about husbands who cheat, women torn between lovers. He reads about romance.  Relationship advice.   Old Emily Post columns on the right way to inquire about relationship statuses.  Articles on table etiquette and what to say to excuse yourself after a faux pas.  How to follow the rules.

He could ask Sam about some of the things he wonders about.  But sometimes Sam gives bad advice. When he asks Sam if he should take a one-room apartment in Lebanon, and Sam had said Ask Dean.  And when he had asked Sam if he could wear a turkey-red plaid shirt with dark green cargo pants and Sam had said Sure.

Why, he asks Sam, why would this woman want to stay, after everything her husband had done? Why would this man leave the wife who has been faithful all these years?  Why did this couple decide to stay together after every terrible thing they have done to each other?

Sam says, “Love, usually,” and Castiel feel anger stir up inside him, because he still does not understand.

Everyone needs someone to take care of them, Sam tells him.  Everyone needs love.

But he doesn’t understand, not even when Sam explains it to him.  “Not angels,” Castiel says.   He is quite certain of this.  Love is something God never intended for his children.

Sam looks at him.  There is something sad about his eyes.  “Sometimes,” he says.  Sam seems certain.  “Angels, too.”

\--

Dean has a gift for protection spells.  His spells are almost invisible to see, even to Castiel, even back when his grace ran through him.  Castiel can’t see the spells anymore, but he knows that they are there still.  He can feel the warm lines of Dean’s spells when he places his hand on the Impala’s hood.  

There are spells to ward the Impala against grand theft auto, wards to keep demons from entering, wards to keep the paint from getting scratched and to keep the tires from blowing while Dean is tearing up the interstate at eight-five.  Spells to make anyone think twice about keying his car.  There are spells for keeping the engine running smooth, to keep the brakes from squealing.  There are spells to keep the Impala and her contents hidden from angels, misdirection spells to keep the highway patrol from catching her license plate number, to make peoples’ eyes drift right past the classic car with her rumbling engine and smooth lines.  Spells that free Dean from getting pulled over or finding a parking ticket stuck on the windshield.  During a rainstorm, there are spells to keep rain off the windshield, to allow her headlights to shine through mist and fog. There are spells for avoiding notice, avoiding trouble, avoiding witches and bad luck. Castiel has thought about asking Dean if there are spells to attract good luck, rather than just keep away the bad, but he suspects that Dean would say No.  Castiel supposes that like magic, luck is all the same.  It just depends on how you look at it.

Sam makes hex bags, secretly.  Castiel knows that he has hidden his spells all throughout the Impala, though Dean is unaware.  Sam has slit open the undersides of the seats and hidden his spells inside, hexing the car against evil.  Spells mean to keep Dean safe.  There are so many spells, there have been for years and years, spells built up on top of each and molded together in layers, like sentiments of rock, and now the Impala is lit up with them.  She shines like a beacon in the night.  Castiel had once been able to see it glowing with power almost as strong as a soul.  

Dean is taking the Impala apart, layer by layer.  He has touched and inspected every inch of her with his hands and eyes, he has been over every part.

“There’s nothing wrong,” Dean says, grim.   Now he is looking at her as something else.  He is stripping her layers of magic away, and as he does, she almost seems to fade.  To Castiel’s human eyes, she is no longer shining.  She just looks like a car.  Dean crawls out from underneath her engine, holding something carefully in the palms of his hands.  Castiel cannot see what it is.  You would have thought he’d have been left with some kind of magic, even without his grace.  But Dean and Sam have stardust in their blood, and he has nothing but cells.

“A spell,” Dean says.  “Something to mess her up, get to her engine.”  Dean places the spell inside the ring of holy oil Sam has poured on the bathroom tiles, drops a match on the circle.

Dean is looking down at the spell, at the holy fire.  “We’ve got to get rid of it,” he says.  “We’ll never leave this place if we don’t.”

\--

Castiel cannot destroy the spell.  He stands at Sam’s shoulders and tells him how, step by step, the right words to say, the right combination of St. John’s wort and wormwood.  Sam’s magic runs in different veins than Dean’s.  Sam wields his like a sword, striking, defending, punishing.  Dean infuses magic in everything he touches, like the warmth that lingers from a lover’s caress. It is so much a part of them that they no longer notice its presence.   It is as natural to them as breathing.  It is something Castiel has no part of anymore.

Sam has a genius for altering recipes. There is no wormwood in this small town, but there is a bottle of absinthe at the largest liquor store.   Dean takes them to a antique shop for the silver bowl.  Castiel watches Dean count out cash at the register and worries.  The small silver bowl will take up most of the rest of their money.

They look for St. John’s wort at a vitamin shop and Sam is considering using dried St. John’s wort stored in capsules, but then he says, suddenly, “Home Depot.”  Like it is the answer to everything.  Castiel doesn’t understand until they arrive and he realizes, Oh.  Plants. Sam walks swiftly with his long legs and gets ahead of them.  Sam thinks they’ll find St. John’s wort along with ground covers in this part of the country.

Castiel is walking through Home Depot, looking up at the tall, tall ceiling, at the glass skylights and the concrete and steel support beams.  There are birds perched there, on the rafters, a flock of small brown birds, the same kind Castiel has seen in parking lots, making soft quiet noises and fluttering close to the ground.  The same kind of birds that he has seen building nests in the gutter of the trailers.  These birds are trapped inside the store. They must have seen the skylights and thought they were headed towards freedom. How will they get out now? he wonders.  Will anyone help them?  

“Cas,” Dean is saying.  “Come on.  Let’s go.”

He looks down.  Sam is standing triumphantly, with a potted plant in his hand.  He nods.  He follows Dean and Sam back outside.

\--

The spell requires blood.  Castiel is prepared to offer his, but as he rolls up his sleeve, Dean touches his arm and says, “Nah, I got this.”  Dean is slicing open his palm and blood is dripping into the silver basin and Castiel is standing there, his shirt unbuttoned at the wrist and hanging open at his throat, his arm bare and useless.

Sam lights the candles.  He dips his fingers in the blood and absinthe and says the words.  He pours the contents of the basin over the spell inside the circle.  It must work, though Castiel cannot tell.  The holy fire sputters and pops, then dies down until there is only a charred ring of ashes on the dirty bathroom floor.

Dean is swinging his keys on his fingers.  “Let’s test it,” Dean says.  Castiel follows him outside.  He has forgotten his coat, so he stands with his arms wrapped around his chest and watches Dean stick his keys in the engine.  It starts on the first try.

But something is wrong.  Dean is frowning.  The Impala is working, but Dean slides out of the car and lifts the hood.  Dean goes still.

“I couldn’t see these before,” he says.

They are standing in front of the Impala looking at the small scratches etched under the hood. Enochian that Castiel knows, backwards and forwards.  Words he’d recognize anywhere, almost more familiar than his own name.  Dean hadn’t seen them before, fixing the Impala.  The sigils must’ve been concealed by the spell all along: The spell’s true purpose, not just stranding them in a trailer park, waiting for the next terrible thing to happen.

“What does it mean?” asks Sam.

“It’s your name,” Castiel says, slowly.  “And Dean’s.  That’s how they’re tracking me.  They are finding me by looking for you.”

“Why wouldn’t they just use your name?” Sam wonders.

Castiel shrugs.  “There is no word for what I am now,” he says.

“So they’ll just find us again,” Dean says bleakly.  “No matter where we go.”

“Your spells will slow them down, but they will catch up eventually,” Castiel says.  

Dean slams the hood shut.  “This is how they found us,” Dean says.  “They broke my wards, left these sigils in her.  This is how they tracked us back to the bunker.  They can find us anywhere, if they want.”  

“I didn’t know,” Castiel says.  “I didn’t know.  I couldn’t see.”

“I know,” says Dean.  He really means it.  Castiel can tell. “It’s not your fault.”

But Castiel is thinking that Dean just doesn’t see. Dean doesn’t like to look at bad things, at anything wrong in the world, without either destroying whatever it is or turning his face away. He never has. Dean can be willfully blind, when he wants to be, and Castiel is afraid that this is another one of those things Dean just won’t look at.  He is one of those things Dean just can’t see.


	11. Chapter 11

 

When he has the money, Dean buys himself things.  Castiel will go to the post office in Lebanon and find half a dozen package slips waiting in their box, he will collect them and bring them back to the bunker and Dean will open his boxes and reveal old blues records purchased off eBay, vintage leather jackets, vhs tapes of made-for-tv-movies from the eighties.  

Castiel has wondered over this.  What this could mean.  What use are these things to anyone?  But Dean says they are important, and they must be, to him.  Dean takes great care of his things.  Dean is meticulous.  He wipes the mud off his workboots before he sets them at the foot of his bed. He washes their cracked and chipped porcelain dishes every night.   Dean spends his time repairing broken things.  The wingback armchair in the library that was missing a leg. He untwists the tangled tape inside his cassettes when they get caught in the tape deck.    

Dean is taking everything out of the Impala’s trunk.  His box of tapes. An army man.  A collection of battered paperbacks shoved under the seats.  Old Nokia cellphones from the glove box.  A child’s sock tucked underneath a seat that once belonged to Sam, the one that Dean refuses to remove because he says it is good luck.  

Dean removes his weapons.  His rifles, shotguns, machetes, swords.  He empties the stash from inside the Impala’s trunk, he pulls weapons from pockets inside the Impala’s interior that Castiel did not know existed.  Dean collects a knife from under the mats on the floorboards, he pulls a pearl-handled pistol from a holster taped underneath the passenger’s seat.  

Dean passes the pistol to Sam.  “What do you think?”  he asks.

“It’s worth more than you’ll get for it,” Sam says. He is frowning.

“Yeah, well,” Dean says.  “But will it get us enough cash to get across the country?.”

“We can’t pawn it,” Sam says.  “It was Dad’s.”

“It’s not like I want to,” Dean says.  “But I don’t think we’ve got a lot of choices here.”

“You can’t,” says Sam, again. Castiel feels himself going distant.  He puts his elbows on his knees and puts his hands over his ears.

“Sam--”  Dean starts.

“Please don’t fight,” Castiel says.  “Please.”  And to his surprise, Sam and Dean turn to him, then look back at each other.  

“I’m sorry,” Sam says quietly.

“Cas, don’t,” Dean is saying, but Castiel ignores him. It’s surprisingly easy to do.  For years now he has been so attuned to Dean’s whims, his desires.  He has always wondered why Dean could be so insistent about the things he needed.  Why he couldn’t bury his wants and needs like roots in the dirt, why he couldn’t leave these things alone, why he couldn’t just let them go and pay attention to something else instead.  

Castiel always has left those kinds of things alone, until now.  Now he is ripping up those dark roots.  

He stands up.  He starts walking.  And Dean stands back and lets him go.

\--

Castiel walks until he reaches the edge of town, where the fading billboards and bleached gas stations melt away into brown grass and bare trees.  There is a cemetery there, beside the Episcopalian church, and he crosses the road.

He walks until he finds a bench underneath a tree, across from a family plot.  He feels very far from himself.  He feels like he has crossed some kind of border, slipped between worlds the way he used to, where the empty white space between his fingers is as far as one star to the next.

Castiel sits and tries to pull himself back in.  He tries to imagine a hot shower, scalding his skin.  Water dripped down the back of his neck. No, that isn't quite right.  That thought only makes him feel further from himself.  There are too many empty spaces there.  He thinks of Sam’s hands, pouring a cup of tea, but that isn't it either.  It's not fair, he thinks.  Human infants are born knowing what they need. All he can do is blindly guess and guess and try to understand the feelings that slowly shift into focus from an unfathomable depth inside him.

He sits on the bench for a long time, and because he has nothing better to do, he watches. He watches as wind moves the branches of the trees, he watches his own dirty shoes scuff the patchy grass under the bench. He watches the sun move and wonders how much longer he’ll have to sit here, waiting on himself. He watches the birds moving in the grass around the trees.

There is a baby bird lying at the foot of the tree, making soft crooning noises. It is so still.  He turns his head and looks at it hard, for a long time, until he can understand why.  The bird’s neck is broken, but it is still alive.

“Oh, no,” he says.  “No.”  He runs his hands across his face.  When he takes his hands away, he finds that his fingers feel wet.

Once he could have glanced at that bird and not felt a thing, but if he had reached out and placed his hand on that small body, he might have spared its life.  Now all he can do is feel and feel, and the only help his hands could offer is release.

He stays there for a long time.  He sits until the darkness falls around him.  He sits under the tree with this slow wetness working slowly down his face and allows the wind to send his hair flying straight up and wonders if he’s worth it. To Dean. To Sam. If he’s done enough good for them, if he’s spilled enough blood or fought enough battles in their names to make saving him worth it.  

He waits there until the bird is dead.  

Then he stands.  He puts one foot in front of the other.  He goes back.

\--

He opens the trailer door and lets it shut behind him.   

Dean is sitting at the kitchen table, alone in the darkness. “Where have you been?” Dean asks.  “Cas?”

“I don’t understand,” Castiel says.   

Dean doesn’t flinch away or leave the room. He stands and flips on the kitchen light.  He moves until he’s at Castiel’s side.  He locks the door behind them.  

Dean opens his arms and folds Castiel inside them.

Castiel rests there for a while, and through it all Dean’s hand stays there on the back of his neck. Castiel can feel fingers combing gently through his hair. Castiel lets his thoughts float away from him, about how nice it is to have someone touching you that way, to know the feeling of fingers combing through your hair.  To know the feeling of Dean’s fingers warm and sure on the back of his head.  Dean makes him notice things. Like how it feels to have your hair touched.  Human hands on his head, keeping him steady.  Not holding him down.  Just holding him here.

Dean just holds him, until Castiel raises his head.   He asks, “Why are you doing this?”

Dean strokes his hair, over and over.  He only says, “You know why.”

Castiel says, “Because you love me,” and Dean says, “Yes. That’s right.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

Dean’s voice has cracks in it.  He says, “Then I’ll show you.”  

He places his hands on Castiel’s face and draws him close.  “This means I need you,” Dean says.  He kisses Castiel’s hair.  “This means I want you here.”  He kisses Castiel’s forehead, he kisses Castiel’s cheeks and the lids of Castiel’s eyes and Castiel shuts them so tight.  

“This means I’ll do anything,” Dean says, “anything,” and he kisses Castiel on the mouth.  This is what it means, Dean says, This is what you mean to me, oh Cas.

Dean is so careful with him.  As if he is a bird resting in the palm of Dean’s hand.  And Castiel thinks he is beginning to understand.  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	12. Chapter 12

Later that night, Dean rolls over on his side and stretches across Castiel’s body to reach his jeans on the bedroom floor.  He takes out his wallet and pulls out a small piece of paper. He takes Castiel’s hand in his own and folds Castiel’s fingers around a faded fortune cookie fortune.

Dean leans in so close that Castiel can feel his breath against his cheek.  Dean presses his mouth near Castiel’s ear and whispers, “It came true.”

Castiel opens his hand.  Lucky numbers 7 3 13 27 5.  

When the darkness in the window becomes gray morning light and Dean is quiet and still by his side, he slips out from under Dean’s arm around his waist.  He goes out and buys a lottery ticket.

He feels lucky.


	13. Chapter 13

Dean locks the trailer door behind them as they leave.

They take the Impala far off the side of the road, in a wood with thick underbrush and briers growing up the trunks of the trees.  Sam waits by the road in their stolen Honda while they cover the Impala with branches and pine straw.  Dean walks a circle around her, spilling dried rosemary and salt from between his fingers.  They leave her buried in the forest.

Dean looks grey and grim in the late morning light.  “We’ll come back,” he says.  “We’ll find her again, when we can.”  At one time, words like these would have only made Castiel angry and confused, but Castiel knows what Dean is doing now.  Dean is only telling himself what he needs to believe in order to keep going on, the way people do.  The way they say things like It’s all right, or It isn’t so bad, or I’ve had worse.  And after a long time of telling yourself these things, you almost forget you ever believed anything else.

Dean is smiling but Castiel can tell that this is one of the last times - that this is the ending of something.

“The angels won’t stop until I’m dead,” Castiel warns him.  “They will always search for me.  You will never be safe, Sam will never be safe.  Not if I stay with you.”

“I know you don’t believe me,” Dean says. “But you’re worth it.  I want to fight for you.  Please let me.  Please let me save you. Just this once.  The way you have done for me.”

He would give Sam and Dean everything, if he could, and suddenly Castiel thinks he might understand Dean, Dean feeding him and clothing him, Dean giving him his coat and the last half of an ice cream bar. When you care about someone, you’d do anything in the wide world to keep them safe. Keep them fed. Keep them clothed.  No matter what it took. No matter the cost.

Castiel tells him, bleakly, “I used to think there was a pattern. That God was somewhere, tucked away behind everything.  That there was a plan set in place, no matter how random our lives seemed.  Now I know that there’s nothing. It’s all just chance.”

To his surprise, Dean is laughing.  “Just chance?” Dean asks.  “Just chance?” I got to meet you.  Now i get to keep you. So if there’s no God,” Dean says, “if there’s nothing left in this godforsaken universe but chance, then I’m the luckiest man in the world.”

That night, when Dean is sleeping in the Honda's backseat, he will sit up front next to Sam and tell him the same thing, and Sam turn his head away from the road, for just a minute, and flash a smile and say, God never abandoned you.  I don't think he ever did.  I think He left you in the only place where you would be loved.

Weeks later, Castiel buys a newspaper at a gas station in Maine.  He takes the article on page seven out to where Dean is waiting by the Honda.  

"We won," he says, and Dean looks at him blankly.  He takes his lottery ticket and presses it into Dean's palm.  "Dean, see.  Your lucky numbers."

Dean throws back his head and laughs.  "So we're millionaires.  Oh, Cas, that's one kind of luck we can't cash in on.  No one going to sign over a million dollars to two dead men and one that doesn't legally exist."  

Dean is holding up his hands.  He is holding them out to Castiel.  “I have nothing for you,” he says.  “I have nothing to give you.  I can’t bring you a blanket or buy you dinner or get you new clothes.  I can’t give you a home.  I can’t give you anything.  But I love you, and I would give you everything if I could. Whatever you wanted.”  Dean offers up his empty hands as though the gesture means nothing, but it is worth the world, so Castiel reaches out and takes them.

Dean is looking at him, really seeing him.  Every terrible thing he’s ever done.  Every terrible thought he’s ever had.  Dean sees it all, and stays right where he is. 

Dean places a hand on the back of Castiel’s neck and tucks Castiel’s head under his chin. Castiel rests there, a bird under a wing.  Like he has a value greater than any number of lottery tickets, as though he in his unwashed clothes is worth more than anything else in the world.

 

\--

It took me a literal year to write this fic.  Thank you for waiting so patiently for me to finish. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.” - Luke 12:7


End file.
